Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

leaf to show their support for a united Canada.
    The only statement that really mattered was that people had come from all over Canada to participate in something no one could have imagined, a powerful and spontaneous outpouring of genuine Canadian patriotism. No one who was there will ever forget it. The biggest cheer came when a speaker announced the crowd was estimated at 150,000. I strongly suspect if the politicians hadn’t interrupted, we would have just sung “O Canada” all afternoon.
    Mark Leiren-Young
Vancouver, British Columbia
     

The Goal of the Century
     
“ A vant tout je suis Canadien.”—“Before all I am a Canadian.”
Sir Georges-Etienne Cartier
A Québec Father of Confederation
     
    Time was running out! It was September 28, 1972. The place—Luzhniki Arena, Moscow. It was the eighth and final game between the Russian National Team and Canada’s best NHL players. The score was tied with less than one minute remaining—and no overtime allowed! With the series tied three games apiece, a tie was no good—we needed a goal and a win!
    I had always dreamed of playing in the NHL. Spurred on by my father, a rabid hockey fan, we never missed our weekly ritual of “Hockey Night in Canada” on the radio, with Foster Hewitt doing the play-by-play. Woe betide anyone in our home who talked when Foster Hewitt spoke.
    According to my dad, when I first donned skates at the age of eight I was a natural. One day in grade five, with my eyes firmly fixed on the NHL, I landed in the principal’s office for practising my autograph in class.
    “Don’t worry about my schoolwork,” I told him confidently, “It won’t matter. I’m going to play in the NHL!” He laughed, pointing out that the six-team league used only 108 players and I didn’t have much of a chance. But his words only strengthened my resolve.
    Growing up in rural Ontario meant old, secondhand hockey equipment. Even so, my speed and strength developed, and I frequently scored goals. After a local play-off game I earned a write-up in the London Free Press that attracted NHL scouts, and in 1959 I ended up in Hamilton with the Detroit Red Wings Junior A farm team. By 1962, I had married Eleanor, my childhood sweetheart, and won the Memorial Cup and an invitation to try out with the Detroit Red Wings. It was a banner year, but also a crossroads decision for me at the young age of nineteen.
    In those days, the NHL “owned” their players. There was no free agency and only a very modest “take-it-or-leave-it” pay. With serious concerns about the uncertainty of professional hockey, despite my dreams I began leaning towards education and a “normal” career. Once again, my Dad spurred me on: “Paul, if you don’t give this a try, for the rest of your life every time you watch, hear or read about the NHL, you’ll ask yourself, ‘I wonder if I could have made it?’ It will drive you crazy.”
    That did it! I would give hockey two years, and if I hadn’t made it by then, I’d hang up the blades, go back to school and get on with life.
    I made the Red Wings that year, and I played with them until 1968, when I was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Sadly, Dad died that same year, seven years after suffering a stroke.
    In 1972, the thrill of a lifetime came when an eight-game series was announced between the Russian National Hockey Team and a Canadian team of hand-picked NHL stars. Over the years, the Russians had become a hockey powerhouse and regularly beat our best amateur teams at the Olympics. The years of Canadian hockey domination were gone.
    The plan, in 1972, was to change all that, put the upstart Russians in their place and show the world hockey was still our national sport.
    The whole nation was excited. The first four games would be in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. The remaining four would be in Moscow. The Cold War, today a distant memory, was at its height. This was not just a series between two hockey teams. This was